santnai, believe this or not, you are dealing with some serious guys into vinyl here but let me attempt to put things into perspective for you
The terms "quality", "fidelity", etc are extremely subjective and have huge dependencies. Some of these dependencies are as follows:
1) The type of music you listen to
2) The type of equipment you've been used to listening to
3) Whether you are a serious or casual listener
4) Your hi-fi gear
5) Your listening room
6) some additional factors (eg: the type of fan you use in your room, even whether you keep the windows or doors open while listening or on a funnier note, even if your ears are clear of ear wax, etc) and last but not the least,
7) What you perceive to be the benchmark for "quality" and "fidelity"
I was a guy who grew up on cassette staple with home brew equipment (of my own design) which was customized for heavy metal music (shrill trebles and heavy bass). All the fundamental audiophile rules (so as to say) were broken here, things like speakers kept on the floor, near the room corners, use of a double active tone control (one fed into the other for extreme boost) and what not. It was hightly impressive to those who passed by our house (the powerful and booming sound) and I really enjoyed it. When I graduated to working and earning, decided to get some good gear, a friend asked me to listen to NAD and I did so. I remember when I first heared the NAD play, I asked the owner, why is the tone control in maximum treble/bass cut mode. To my shock, he told me that the tone controls were actually in full boost mode, and he kept it that way because he knew that I was used to listening to highly coloured sound. His usual listening position was "flat". My first impression was, Rs.35,000 for a NAD 106 preamp and a NAD 216thx poweramp that sounded so pathetic. But the guy was good enough to let me listen to the setup for some time. After about 3 hours of listening, I realized that not only could I listen to the music for 3 hours but also wanted to listen for some more time. With my earlier setup, I could listen to only 1 album at a time.
Anyways, to keep the topic short, and I'm trying to be extremely honest here, if your benchmark of audio fidelity is your CD (not sure if its an original CD or an MP3 one), you'll need a very high end turntable with an extremely expensive cartridge and an andiophile original (analogue) mastered LP to match it. Your Technics turntable with Audio Technica cartridge and Silsila LP will not be able to match it. There are so many variables when it comes to listening to vinyl as the guys on the forum have attempted to explain to you. When it comes to your CD player, just plug it into any amp with speakers and you'll get sound out of it. For a turntable, you need a good turntable, a well configured tonearm, an above average cartridge, a good phono preamp and most importantly, a good LP to create above average fidelity.
There is also another factor associated with this which a lot of the modern generation may not understand. Playing an LP is a different feeling. That brings out a special feeling of enjoyment in guys like me who grew up listening to LPs (in the late 1970s and 1980s). For the new generation, an iPOD connected to an amp and speakers tends to seem more practical and sound better. Anyways, these are my personal thoughts.
My opinion would be for you to remember for a start that a turntable is not a plug-and-play device like a CD player, hence just picking up an old one, and attempting to get it to play is not a fair way to judge it.
Give yourself some time, look at your equipment, listen to more records. Visit a friend who has a turntable and listen to his rig. Talk a lot about your experience on this forum and engage our very knowledgeable members like sachu888, microflex, omishra, malvai, etc for clearning your doubts and get the vinyl feel into you first. I'm sure you'll come back after a year and say, "My vinyl sounds better than my CD"
Now for the anticlimax: I actually did what you did (you can see the equipment I use from my signature). I got hold of an original CD of Jhoota Hi Sahi and of course, bought the LP of Jhoota Hi Sahi, put my equipment behind a curtain and made my wife listen to the track, "Call me dhil" on both formats. She came back saying that the CD sounded better but only because she could not hear any ticks (I did'nt clean the record before playing it). However she could not tell the difference between the 2, from a fidelity perspective (I was not surprised as I was sure that the LP in question was mastered from a digital source).....and yes, I still play my music with the treble and bass turned up..!!
Welcome to the world of vinyl and don't be disappointed, I'm sure if you do the right things, you'll be another of the many fanatic vinyl supporters like myself, on this forum.
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